Martinique and Guadeloupe

I broke the outboard. 

Matty came to visit and we had a great week exploring Martinique. Starting with Richie and Matty climbing mount Pelée, the volcano that erupted in 1932 and killed 30,000 people. Higher than Ben Nevis, it was a long hard climb and the 2 of them were very quiet that night. Mandy & I didn't go because we had boat jobs to do.

We had a few great nights out in Fort De France. Found the equivalent of Lark Lane. 

Richie joined in with the local chess club and just got beaten by toothless Charles. They were all so friendly.

The north end of the Island was the most Jurassic park yet, you could just imagine a T-rex coming out of the trees.

We had to cut the drone flight short as it rained

Then we walked up to a lovely waterfall through the jungle. Some bits of it did remind us of Brotherton park, green and muddy but very humid.

The vines were massive, you can see how Tarzan could swing through jungle on them.

We had some great sails up and down the coast of Martinique, lots of snorkeling and visited the town of St Pierre. St Pierre got destroyed in the eruption of 1902 and is where 30,000 died.

 mount Pelée and St Pierre

 Matty caught a fish but unfortunately the only evidence of it is him losing it below.

Time for Matty to leave and on the day was an enormous carnival so there was no buses to the airport and the center of Fort De France was completely cordoned off.  It was madness, I felt really out of place not dressed in red and black underwear. We eventually found a taxi for him. Goodbye Matty, welcome anytime, thanks for helping fix my outboard engine.

Then it was time to move on. We have to be in North Virginia by June 1st for insurance purposes. Onto Guadaloupe, another French speaking island that deals in euros and cheap wine. It consists of a few islands. We landed on Iles des Saints for a night after a lovely calm 2 knot overnight sail from Maritinique.

A beautiful little island with a small very well kept town with very expensive drinks.

We needed to move on and get to the Yamaha dealers on the main island of Guadeloupe as I had broken the propeller on some reef. We stayed in the marina Bas Du Fort, luxury! first marina since Tenerife. It had everything, toilets, showers, water, power, yacht chandlers, bike and car hire, dentist, doctor, restaurants, Carrefour and all for £35 per night. Boss marina, very helpful staff, great place to get work done, highly recommended. We met some friend from our Atlantic crossing group, Ken and Julie from Asgaard and Rasmus and Anne from Le Louve and had a catchup drink on Asgaard in the marina. They were there getting some work done, as were we. No pics unfortunately. 

Cool boat

I had to go off to the other side of the island to the Yamaha dealers (It would be wouldn't it)  to pick up a new propeller, so I hired my first electric scooter and off I went and left Mandy and Richie to walk around the town of Point a Pitre.

Outboard fixed and we're back on the plane gang.

Onto the stunning location of Pigeon Island, Malendure beach on the north west of the Island to the Jacques Cousteau marine reserve. On the way we stopped of is a secluded bay for the night and I slept on deck so I could watch the total eclipse of the moon. It started off perfectly. Lying on my back, scorcio hot, moon pretty much at at the zenith, perfectly clear sky, image stabilized binoculars on my stomach. I dozed off and woke just as the moon hit the earth's shadow. Slowly, over the course of an hour or so the earths shadow covered the moon and I watched it all with few winks along the way. I got some great views of the moon. No photos from a moving boat unfortunately. I was just thinking to myself, "This is one of the best astronomical events I have ever seen" when just at totality the clouds arrived, completely covering the moon and of course it started raining. I did get a 10 second clearing in the clouds of totality which was amazing. The dark orange moon was surrounded by stars. Definitely the best lunar eclipse I've seen. I should've gone to shore and took some photos.

Ilets de Pigeon

Onto the marine reserve. There is a statue of Monsieur Cousteau on the sea floor which I had to see. I was fascinated by his films when I was a kid. It was Jacques Cousteau and James bond's Thunderball that got me into diving. The snorkeling was amazing so many colourful fish. (Just like Andy's aquatics in New Ferry) No piccies as our GoPro is bust.

We had a slight mishap. On getting into the dinghy to go ashore, it was a bit swelly, Richie slipped and fell in taking me with him. I lost my glasses and my phone got waterlogged. So the next day we tried looking for my glasses. We were in 10 metres of water so I was not very hopeful. I spent about 2 hours underwater following Richie while he rowed around using a Bayesian search pattern. No luck.

We met up one evening onshore with Rasmus and Anne again for a game of boules. England got battered by Denmark, who knew they play boules in Denmark :-)

Time to leave the French Antilles and continue north towards Puerto Rico.